Counter-Strike was first released as a Half-Life Mod on June 19th, 1999. The Counter-Strike Mod was developed by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe. On April 12th, 2000, Valve announced that the Counter-Strike developers and Valve had teamed up, since then Counter-Strike has been available to buy. The Final Version of Counter-Strike is Version 1.6 released at September 15, 2003.

Counter-Strike maps use the following prefixes de_ for Bomb Defusal, as_ for Assassination, and cs_ for Hostage Rescue.